


For What She Was

by LostSoftSpaceDyke



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: F/F, Interwar Period, Past Czech/Hungary, Past Relationship(s), Reminiscing on a relationship that was actually shit, crying in lesbian, thank you katuman for these fucking tags also, yup a lesbian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 04:54:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22011409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LostSoftSpaceDyke/pseuds/LostSoftSpaceDyke
Summary: Erzse struggles not with her own independence, but with the loss of her subject states and takes to one night stands to fill the void. She didn't plan to feel something. She most certainly didn't plan to be reminded of an angry Bohemian who always had one foot out the door. This started as porn without plot and then it developed feelings and finally it developed historical significance.Interwar (post-WW1, pre-WW2).
Comments: 1
Kudos: 9





	For What She Was

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place during the interwar period, post-WW1 but pre-WW2. No specific date because the date itself isn't quite as significant to this fic as the period itself. Bohemia and Czech are the same country. Erzse, at this point in history, doesn't recognize Czech as independent so she'll call her Bohemia till death takes her probably. And no, these aren't plot holes; Erzse is an unreliable narrator who is honestly barely fooling herself. Enjoy!

The music spilled into the street along with the cutting edge of cigarette smoke, and she tasted it under her lips as she pressed a lovely stranger against the wall. She traced over the curve of her jaw, felt the staccato pulse against her tongue, it's sharp notes contrasting the slow piano music and driving Erzse closer, hands more daring as she worked just as feverishly. The lovely stranger reciprocated with her nails dragging along Erzse's scalp, a reminder that she was no less passive in this endeavor than she would be for any of the many Viennese men who had propositioned her. Erzse moaned then - openly - and was all too grateful for the growing crescendo of the music indoors that left the sound as a secret vibration against the other woman's skin. 

When was the last time she’d been like this? The last time she’d picked a woman out with the confidence of an inebriated man and with the same sheer disregard for propriety? When had she last made eye contact across the room and known that the woman had seen her for what she was, for what she’d wanted, and wanted it in return? She pressed forward, hip to hip as she buried herself in the curve of her shoulder and left mark after mark until she fretted that she had overstepped, had taken too much, only to be brought back from the brink of an apology by the glazed-over look in the other woman’s eyes. She kissed her then, near-bruisingly, and took whatever the woman would give. 

“If I knew poetry would elicit such a reaction,” the woman laughed in an accent Erzse couldn’t quite place but one she’d kill to hear over and over and over again. She’d sacrifice an empire to hear her name on her tongue even once. She dropped to her knees suddenly, ignoring the bite of cold cobblestone through her trousers as she pressed her cheek to the woman’s hip, looking up to her with a certain reverence she was not previously aware she could possess. Her thumb found the edge of her skirt, tracing the spot where it brushed at her thigh as if asking for both permission and forgiveness at once. 

“Tell me your name?” Erzse begs. 

The woman stroked her thumb along Erzse’s skin, across too-sharp cheekbones and the hint of a long-healed scar. Erzse kissed her palm. She hadn’t planned the night like this, hadn’t planned to memorize the distinct pattern of her grey-green eyes. She hadn’t expected to fall just a little bit in love with the first person who wanted her for what she was.

She shifted her focus, kissed her way up her knee. “Won’t you tell me? Shall I guess?”

The woman laughed and Erzse kissed her way up her thigh, felt the weight of the woman’s skirt against her shoulders, smoothing a hand over the soft flesh she'd just exposed. She nipped at the spot where stockings met bare skin. Another light bruise rose to surface to meet her lips. 

"Greta?" She teasingly guessed, the heat of her breath against the groove where her hip met her thigh, letting it linger in a way she was not accustomed to doing but which felt right all the same. "Ilse?" Her tongue traced the edges of the woman's garters. She was lost, here, where silk straps overlapped with too-soft cotton, hands at her hips wanting, wanting as they claimed whatever they could reach. "Lotte?" A kiss to one clothed hipbone. 

"Do you think I'm a local?" The timbre of the woman’s voice had shifted lower and Erzse grinned into her thigh, kissing it there as if in apology for making such a grievous error. Then, like a freshly-forgiven schoolboy, blunt nails slipped between the silk straps and Erzse kissed her way across a new expanse, exploring the freshly uncovered territory under her slip and living for each and every twitch that followed the trail of her lips. 

"Is anyone in Vienna a local?"

The woman above her nearly replied, sucking in a breath as if about to explain herself but then it became a breath of a very different kind, a sharply inhaled half-beat as Erzse tugged down the only layer between her lips and the heat of the other woman's flesh, burying herself between the softness of her thighs without pretext and living for the tremors that responded to the ghost of her tongue. And God what a joy it was to baptise herself in the taste of someone new. 

She pressed in then with pressure as light as she could manage, just barely breathing against her clit as she slowly traced it, letting the touch of calloused fingers in her hair guide her but never letting them push. Her meandering tongue did little more than tease, deliberate with each feathery stroke against her clit. She felt the heat of her against her lips, all wet heat and musk against a backdrop of Vienna night cold that seeped in from where the wet cobblestone hit her knees. 

"Is this teasing punishment for not telling you my name?"

Erzse slipped her fingers in then, the teasing nature gone as she curled them just as suddenly, her lips pressed in a smirk against the woman’s inner thigh. She revelled in the gasp she earned. “Might just be.”

The last time she’d felt this, the last time she’d genuinely had an interest in a woman beyond a means to an end, it had been with a woman who had spent their entire century long affair with a bag packed and one foot out the door. She took her time, ravished her slowly as she did now, her lips closed around her clit and fingers moving deliberately. Her free hand brushed along her thigh, memorizing the feel of her skin as she had so often with her past lover. These things would not last. The woman she loved would leave. The woman she  _ could  _ love, trembling above her as sensations built in thick layers, would leave too. All she would have was the memory of blunt nails scratching along her scalp, calloused hands tracing absently over her cheek, and half-gasped breathless nonsense. 

“ _ Fuck _ .” It's the first coherent word the other woman has spoken in what feels like an age and  _ God  _ if Erzse doesn’t feel it radiating in her blood. She worked more frantically then, the pace of her fingers sloppy in the need to pick up the speed, her lips pressing fevered little kisses to the inside of her thigh until she felt the tremor of the woman above her, the sudden stop of her hips.

She kissed her clit then, watching as even the faintest touch seemed to leave the woman shaky. Her former lover would have kept going. She would have pressed for more until Erzse was exhausted and spent, pillowed by her thigh and spread out on the bed. She took a breath and rested her cheek on the woman’s thigh all the same. 

“Will I see you again?”

“I never stay long,” the woman admitted and Erzse wondered when she had become so foolish as to fall a little bit in love with a mortal woman. One she’d just eaten out behind a club after a drunken romp, no less. But then she’d felt the ghost of a touch against her cheek, under her chin as it lifted her head and Erzse, to her own credit, did not simply loll into the palm of the other woman’s hand but stared directly forward as if unaffected. One gained a certain skillset after one too many botched affairs. “I would like to see you again but I don’t work in the sort of field that would allow me...personal attachments.”

“Do I look like the kind of woman to crave attachment?”

The other righted herself, smoothing out the memory of Erzse’s impatience from her skirts. “I suppose not.”

They stayed like that for far too long, Erzse sitting with her back against the wall as the woman put herself back in order. Ridding herself of the remnants of Erzse’s touch. Bohemia had done the same that final time, smoothing out her hair, grabbing her bag, and walking right out of Erzse’s life as a new woman, she supposed. No goodbye, not really. Just a letter in the mail addressed to Erzse’s husband, stating her independence and asking that Erzse, specifically, not contact her again.  _ Do I look like the kind of woman to crave attachment?  _ The woman beside her slid down to sit next to her, back to the wall, fishing for something in her purse and Erzse, for the life of her, couldn’t understand why the woman hadn’t yet left. 

“Cigarette?” the woman offered.

Erzse nodded, picking one out of the proffered case and setting it between her lips before reaching into her jacket pocket for matches. “You haven’t left.”

The woman laughed. Erzse wondered, not for the first time, if this was a woman she could love. 

“Would you like me to?”

_ “Is that what you want? To leave? Fuck off then,” Erzse shouted, throwing the closest object in reach in Bohemia’s general direction. A rather expensive decorative box hit the woman in the shin before clattering on the carpet. _

_ Bohemia snorted at that, pausing from her packing in order to look Erzse in the eye. “Roderich holds you on a prettier leash than he does the rest of us, but don’t be stupid. It’s a leash all the same, Erzsebet.”  _

_ “You’re bitter. Because I contribute to this monarchy, because Roderich considers me an equal,” Erzse spat back. “I have power and you hate it.” _

_ Bohemia laughed, shrill and desperate. Erzse could see the white-knuckle grip she had on the edges of her suitcase. “Roderich lets you have your little war games, lets you have your affairs. He even does you the courtesy of not consummating your farce of a marriage. But you’re not a  _ free woman  _ as long as he  _ lets  _ you.” _

_ She hated when she was right (hated when she fought back). Erzse slammed the suitcase shut with disregard for the items Bohemia was still holding. “Get the fuck out of my house.” _

_ “With pleasure, Frau Edelstein,” Bohemia spat. She put the last few things in the pockets of her coat - the last remnants of a long-lost monarchy, her long-lost independence - and turned to leave. “And my name is Adela, in case you ever decide to give a shit.” _

“No. Stay if you’d like.” Erzse lit the match, lighting her own cigarette before offering the matches to her. The other woman lit her cigarette and they sat, letting the cobblestones seep wet cold into any exposed skin they could reach. She wasn’t sure of what to do in this sort of situation. Bohemia never stayed  _ after _ . They rarely spoke  _ after _ . Bohemia would come, smooth her skirts out, and leave without a word. But this woman (with her teasing and her poetry and her expensive cigarettes) settled into the cold to stay longer. To keep her company. Erzse took a drag, a long one, and settled into the silence for a moment to just watch the ash flake off.

“Are you the kind of woman to crave attachment?” The woman looked up to Erzse, the cigarette dangled precariously between her fingers. Erzse fiddled with hers, trying to come up with the best way to dodge the question.  _ If I told you truthfully, would it scare you off? Would you leave if you knew why Bohemia did?  _ She looked down at her hands and wanted,  _ wanted  _ that which she was incapable of having. 

She dropped what was left of her cigarette, stubbing it out with the toe of her boot. She gently, carefully plucked the one between the other woman’s grasp, for a moment, fingers filling the empty spaces in her hand. “No,” she lied. 

“Shame. I don’t stay long in Vienna when I come, and my work is rather against me becoming attached to locals, but…” She trailed off as she got to her feet and offered Erzse a hand up. Erzse took it, a little too focused with the weight of it in hers to let go even after she’d stood. “I was hoping to see you again.” 

“Were you?” Erzse finished off the last of her cigarette, stubbing it out with the toe of her boot. “Well then.”

“Are you a local? How do I find you?” When was the last time a woman picked  _ her _ out with the confidence of an inebriated man and with the same sheer disregard for propriety? When was the last time  _ she’d _ been wanted as more than just a means to an end? Erzse let her hand drop but was suddenly unsure of what to do with it now that the weight of the other woman’s hand was gone. 

“A local.” It was a half-truth. She lived in Vienna, would likely continue to until she overcame the fear of hearing Bohemia’s mother tongue spoken in Budapest. “I come here most weekends. Ask for Hedervary.”

“I will.” The woman smiled, getting to her toes to kiss Erzse’s cheek, her hands shoved into the pockets of her coat. "Who knows? Maybe next time you'll walk out with my name."

**Author's Note:**

> I have been in this fandom too damn long. 
> 
> Before the historical notes, I'd like to give a huge thank you to Katuman. Thanks for putting up with my whining about writing this fic over the last few weeks, for listening to my scatterbrained plotting, and for some amazing lines. This fic would literally be half its proposed length and way less interesting without you. 
> 
> Okay so now, historical context. The following is severely simplified and does not account for splinter groups, political infighting, America's meddling, etc. 
> 
> One of Wilson's Fourteen Points was the demand that the individual nationalities held under Austria-Hungary be given the right to "autonomous development". This term is relatively vague but the Austrian court decides to give the individual nationality groups the right to self-governance. Some Hungarian leaders are angry because they believe many of the former Bohemian states to be rightfully part of their empire (others are just glad to be out from under Austria), whereas all the minority nationalities under Austria-Hungary feel they've been cheated out of full and proper independence. Czechoslovakia declares its independence against a dying empire and Hungary, with nothing left to keep it tied to Austria, declares its own independence from Austria a short while later.


End file.
